One Hundred Steps at a Time - My Appalachian Trail Adventure: May 2016

These are in reverse order and some written when they happened and some days later.

May 30 - 5.5m
Slackpacking today to Lehigh gap
Met Alice and dog Jack at a shelter with many other hikers.
Pat picked me up at the lehigh river bridge.
I swam in the lehigh river to cool off.

May 29th - 8.6m
I slack packed today over the knifes edge
I met Alice and her dog Jack
Staying tonight at the bed and breakfast with Pat. Filbert B&B
Got stung sting by a sweat bee, no problem.
Fell and scraped up my shin and pushed my face into a pile of poison ivy.

I stopped to talk to a young woman Julie's age with the trail name Alice and her puppy Jack. She's named after Alice in Wonderland. Jack is only 6 months old he's been on the trail since May 8th.
He was so tired I couldn't even lift his head to see who it was talking to Alice

May 28
Zero day
Went to Hershey with Pat.
Did laundary where I met a cook of a local restaurant named Ken. He asked a lot of questions about my trip.

May 27
At the Dan's Spring camp, woke and directed "Renegus maximus" and Jarhead to the spring when they arrived. QBM showed up and we all talked for 15 or 20 min. We all left about the same time. Everyone passed me but I caught QBM and Renegus maximus at the next shelter. Allentown shelter. It was 88 degrees and I stayed at the shelter for 2 hours. I searched for a hotel room and ride but a holiday weekend was coming up. When I called a b&b (blue mtn summit) Ken said to come to him and he'd help. I decided to take a room for a day or two and recover myself. Pat called and said she would drive up the next day
Renegus maximus called to check on me since he thought I'd be camped near him three miles farther on. Really nice of him.

May 26th 11m
Wow my adrenaline is through the ceiling. I was walking along a nice wide path and all the sudden there was a rattlesnake in front of me and he started rattling and scared the wits out of me. It worked perfect his rattle was supposed to scare me off and it did.
Got caught with my pants down at the spring while I was washing. I think it might have been Zen master and pants.
Jar head past me just before the eckville shelter. I think I'm going to spend hottest part of the day there and then hike the last 4 miles of the day when it's cooler
After shelter I struggled up to the ridge and came across a camp. Renegus maximus was camped and asked to use my phone to call his wife and report his camp location. Later I passed Jarheads camp too, I struggled on for 2 more miles over boulders. I reached Dan's spring. Camped there and it rained that night.

QBM - Qubec Bearded man
Jarhead played "farmers daughter" song.

May 25th 8.8m
Met Jarhead, he saw me resting beside the trail and stopped to make sure I was okay.
4 hills today, totaling 1943ft
Springs named Pocahontas and Minnehaha
There was a thru-hiker at the hotel in Pine Grove a couple of days ago he was visiting his mother and had her dog there too. I saw them at breakfast. His Trail name is LG or LJ and he just passed me on the trail today and said hello and recognized me.
I met Nathan and Robin flip floppers from Australia
Met the sculpture students again , the girl broke her shoe right after I met them and they had to take two 0 days to buy new shoes. I mentioned it because they hike so fast that in theory I would never have seen them again. Names: Pants and zen master

Later at the end of the day I passed pants and Zen Masters camp. They had a small campfire and invited me to come over for a moment. I only stayed for about three minutes cuz I was too tired and had to get on to my own camp.

A couple I met at an overlook gave me a half a bottle of water just cuz I was running short. They also told me that they knew Tim, a flip flopper that I shared a camp with a few days back. Tim did not have a trail name yet. And the couple told me that he had named himself "no name" as its translated into in Spanish. They are following him on Facebook and said they would let him know that they met me.

May 24 (15.72 miles)
Left my boots at the hotel and had to have the driver come back to get me to go get them. Duh.

Larry the driver told me about his reconversion to Christianity and how because of it he quit smoking and drinking cold turkey. 30 years ago
Met "hare bear" at shelter, talked while he had lunch and I rested. Trying to finish by July so he can go to Colorado with family vacation.
Loss of 950ft in 1 mile was steepest decent yet coming into port clinton. Shuttle driver had to wait 30 minutes for me.

May 23 - 0 miles
Hotel in Pine Grove

These are in random order, oh well.